The great outdoors

My blip yesterday brought some very thoughtful responses about the use and abuse of the natural world and our survival in it.

Tonguetied reminded me of the book The Last Child in the Woods in which the author Richard Louv deplores the disconnection he sees today between children and nature. Concerns about real or imagined dangers inhibit parents from allowing kids to run free out of doors and at the same time electronic games and gadgets offer alternative but sedentary forms of indoor entertainment. Result: no more tree houses, fishing, campfires, dens and encounters with wild animals, no more opportunities to explore, discover and run risks free from parental supervision. Louv sees this 'nature deficit' as directly linked to rising rates of obesity, boredom, depression and attention deficit disorders among young people and he suggest ways that families can redress the balance.

This seems to me closely related to E.O.Wilson's earlier theory of biophilia, the idea that human beings have an inbuilt attraction to, and need for, living things, both plants and animals, that cannot be suppressed. Hence our desire for pets, gardens, pot plants, flowers, bird tables, country walks, nature programmes on TV and even animal toys and ornaments. Without access to any of these we lack something essential to our emotional well being. For example, it is well established that contact with animals promotes physical and mental healing.

Anyway, these thoughts were going round in my head when I spotted this family of kids and grown-ups enjoying a crabbing expedition on a dull afternoon at the end of the old harbour. The point of it is not to catch crabs for eating but simply to enjoy the excitement of seeing how many of the small creatures you can lure on to a bit of bait and hoick out of the water, keep in a bucket and then release back into the sea before you go home. At the same time you fill your wellies with water, slip on the seaweed, scream at the sea gulls and generally have a lot of fun in the open air before heading back for tea, well reconnected to the natural world.